An impatient male customer raised his voice from nearby table. “Hey miss, can I get some ketchup?”
“Of course, just give me a moment,” she said, flashing a smile. She made it another two paces before a customer turned to her with an irate expression.
“My order is wrong,” he said, holding up the top bun of his hamburger so she could see the insides. “I asked for no mustard. This has mustard. I didn’t want mustard.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Theresa said without missing a beat. She removed the plate from the table and placed it on her tray. “Give me just a minute and I’ll get you another with no mustard.”
Three more steps and she arrived at table six and served their food, received a request for steak sauce, and then returned to the kitchen. She set the rejected hamburger with mustard on the counter and met Smiley’s knowing gaze. “No mustard, please.”
Ire touched his eyes, and he eyeballed the rejected food. “Sweetie, that tag didn’t say no mustard. I know what it said, and it didn’t say no mustard.”
Theresa offered an apologetic smile. “I know, I checked the ticket. Please, no mustard?”
With a grumble, he seized the plate and got rid of the untouched food, and then he turned away to toss another patty on the grill. Theresa got what she needed from the condiment station and headed back onto the floor. Her first few minutes set the tone for the entire evening. Over the next four hours, she got stiffed on tips three times and received more complaints than usual, all the while enduring Hilary’s passive aggressive scrutiny and jibes.
Just after ten, the second shift released from the silver mine and hungry workers filled up the booths. Three human men arrived—Hal Smith and brothers, Joel and Ruddy Arneson. They had a reputation for being troublemakers known for their rowdy behavior and not being able to keep their hands to themselves. Theresa traded a long look with Maggie.
“It’s my turn,” Theresa said with a grimace.
Maggie frowned in return. “Those boys need a good talkin’ to,” she said. “I know Hal’s mama, and she’s a real sweet woman, but her husband knocks her around somethin’ awful. Her sons didn’t learn respect growing up.”
“Don’t worry, I can handle them,” Theresa said, squaring her shoulders. She gathered three menus, plastered on a bright smile, and headed toward the men who were waiting to be seated. She greeted them with more enthusiasm than she felt, delivering good old-fashioned customer service.
“Good evening, welcome to Hilary’s.” She seated the three miners in a booth and endured their unskilled flirting with an unwavering smile, the whole time envisioning her body encased in a suit of armor. Everything they did slid right off—nothing stuck.
The first time Hal pinched her butt, she ignored him and removed her backside from his reach, but the insult riled her wolf in unexpected ways. It rankled that he’d dare treat her in such a manner when she was capable of putting his arm in a sling.
As a predator, she always walked a fine line between balancing her two halves. Within the pack, she had gained status and begun to come into her own power, which meant an increase in the respect her pack mates conferred on her. However, humans viewed her as nothing more than a lowly waitress and a single mother, and often treated her accordingly.
The second time Hal grabbed her ass, Theresa whirled and smacked his offending appendage, shooting him a glare. “Stop putting your hands where they’re not welcome!”
“Hey, darlin’, don’t be like that.” Hal spread his hands to demonstrate his innocence. He wore a big, toothy grin, making it clear how little he respected her warning.
“We gotta have a reason for comin’ here, and it sure as hell ain’t the food.” Ruddy leered at her and the three men shared a good laugh at her expense.
Their mockery fueled her irritation. With the full moon so close, her wolf was already in ascendance. It took very little provocation to push her toward real anger. She swung on him, hands clenched into fists.
“I won’t warn you again,” Theresa said in a voice laced with threat.
The men laughed again at her warning, refusing to take her seriously. Theresa frowned and made a point of turning her back on Hal—daring him to touch her again. Her actions were ballsy, but her newfound self-confidence allowed her to take unprecedented chances. She refused to be treated like a piece of meat to be pawed by whatever offending male perceived her as easy prey.
Hal surged to his feet and pawed her backside again, delivering a hard pinch intended to hurt. A low rumble erupted from Theresa’s throat and she spun on him. Acting on instinct, she drew her arm back and took a swing. She threw all of her strength into the punch and hit Hal square in the face.
The blow knocked Hal clean off his feet. He struck the back of the booth and slumped over with blood gushing from his mouth and nose. He blinked several times and gazed up at her dully. Ruddy bellowed in outrage and lumbered to his feet. He reached for Theresa, and she seized his throat with her hand. His mouth gaped open and he gasped for air.
“I am through putting up with your harassment,” Theresa said, voice soft but deadly. She met Ruddy’s gaze and allowed her power to show. Her wolf peered out of her eyes. The man’s eyes rolled back in his skull and the rank smell of urine filled the air. Sneering, Theresa released her hold on him and stepped back to avoid the puddle forming at his feet. He landed in a heap on the floor.
She turned toward the front of the restaurant, and dead silence confronted her. Abruptly, she became aware of their audience. Throughout the once busy restaurant, all activity had ceased. The customers, fearful and disbelieving, stared at her with wide eyes and open mouths.
Flabby jaws hanging, Hilary grabbed for the phone and called for the police. “It’s an emergency—a man is hurt. No, no, send the cops. My waitress beat him up.”
Crap.
Well aware that she’d messed up big time, Theresa walked away from the table, past all of the shocked customers into the back. She gathered her possessions and went out front to wait for the cops. She harbored no illusions that she still had a job. Not that she would miss the diner. As Zach liked to point out, it was a crap job that paid unfair wages for how hard she worked. She would find another to replace it in a heartbeat… So long as her reputation in the human community wasn’t irretrievably damaged.
Even then, being unemployed was not the end of the world. She always had the option of moving in her with mother, and the pack would never permit a mother and child to go hungry. It hurt her independence to admit it, but if it came down to it, Zach would take care of her and Isabel. She had no doubt.
A much more pressing concern was the prospect of being arrested. Maybe she should have been panicking, but instead she felt disconnected. She had assaulted not one, but two men. She’d be lucky if she didn’t wind up in jail and her child in the custody of social services. Her hope for a reprieve rested in the fact that the town sheriff also happened to be a member of the pack.
A short time later, two police cars parked in front of the diner with lights flashing, but silent sirens. An ambulance pulled alongside, and a crowd of curious onlookers gathered just beyond the official vehicles. Sheriff Sly Mahoney talked to the three miners, making notes on a pad of paper.
“All right, that will be all for now,” Sly said, flipping the pad closed. In his late twenties, the handsome lawman stood about five eleven and boasted a strapping build. He held the title of Epsilon within the pack, fifth-ranked after Charlaine, and his career in law enforcement made him a valuable and influential member.
He motioned and the EMTs loaded up the ambulance, removing both Hal and Ruddy to the hospital for further treatment. Although uninjured, Joel accompanied them.
“Are they going to press charges?” Theresa asked Sheriff Mahoney. She stood on the curb in front of the diner beside the lead police car. Her hands were clutched together, suffering the abuse of pensive wringing as she waited to learn her fate. She wanted nothing more than to cry, but she refused to show weakness,
no matter how dire the circumstances.
“Theresa, I’m not going to arrest you,” Sheriff Sly Mahoney said with the distinct note of reluctance in his voice. “Neither of those men wants to press charges. The embarrassment of standing up in a courthouse and admitting that a slip of a waitress put them in the hospital—not to mention what their wives would say—is too much.”
Caution tempered her relief. Theresa’s features twisted into a grimace. “But?”
His voice dropped so that only she could hear. “But, Adam is going to have to be told that that you’ve used your strength in front of humans.”
Her expression grew grim and her stomach churned. She dreaded the prospect of facing Adam more than all the lost jobs or jail time in the world. If he chose, the Alpha had the authority to banish her—to take away her child and kick her out of Iron Stone forever. His power was absolute. He could even condemn her to death. She doubted he’d allow her newfound celebrity status to temper her punishment for endangering the entire pack.
Heart of the Wolf be damned.
Her fancy new title wasn’t anything more than a political ploy to rally the Iron Stone wolves to do his bidding. Her only hope lay in continuing to play along with Adam’s plans. Once Robert or Zach seized control of the pack, then she would be safe.
“Don’t worry, Theresa,” he said with a reassuring smile. “You know Zach isn’t going to let anything happen to you.”
“Thank you, Sly,” Theresa said with a grateful smile. She felt the empathic pack bond connecting them, and knew that his assurances were sincere. She could count Sly Mahoney as a friend. It served to reinforce her faith in and the loyalty to her pack. For every Donna and Simone, there was a Charlaine or an Ambra to counterbalance the good against the bad.
A ghost of a smile curved Sly’s lips, touched his eyes, and conveyed his approval. “Don’t put any more men in the hospital, all right?”
“I’ll try not to.” She found it shocking that she’d put anyone there in the first place. Violence wasn’t her way, and yet it seemed to have plagued her for the last week. Casting a final glance at the departing ambulance, Theresa took a few uncertain steps toward her employers. Along with a crowd of spectators, Hilary and Spencer huddled together near the entrance. They watched her approach with marked unease, frightened rabbits before the wolf.
Hilary’s jowls trembled as she marshaled her outrage. “Theresa Sanchez, you’re fired! Clear out your stuff and don’t bother coming back. We’ll mail your last paycheck!”
Theresa closed her eyes. She felt like laughing hysterically, but settled for a sigh of resignation. Some things were worth fighting for, others weren’t. There were other crappy jobs out there. Tomorrow, she’d start looking, but for tonight, she wanted nothing more than to go home, soak in a hot bath, and cry herself to sleep. She turned and left without saying a word.
The drive home passed in a surreal haze. The moon hung bright and pregnant with promise in the sky, a mere two days shy of full. Everything passed in a blur, and she didn’t register other vehicles on the road. After a brief internal debate, Theresa decided to leave Isabel at her mother’s house. There was nothing to be gained by waking up the child up and moving her at such a late hour.
She parked in the driveway, locked the vehicle, and started for the front door. Her porch lighting fixture was busted, another item on the long list of requested fixes her landlord hadn’t gotten to yet. She relied on her wolf’s nocturnal vision to navigate the dark sidewalk, moving with confidence until a stir of shadows caused her to stop in her tracks.
A hulking male figure stepped out of the darkness surrounding her front porch. For a crazy second, Theresa imagined that one of the men from the diner had followed her home. The man’s features resolved into those of Carl Reynolds, Donna’s boyfriend, dispelling her wild conjecture. A bolt of fear lanced through Theresa, because the male werewolf both outranked and outweighed her. She’d rather have faced three human men than Carl.
She drew herself up, shoulders squared, spine straight, and held steady. With a touch of pure bravado, she met his eyes and refused to demonstrate even a hint of submissive behavior. “Carl,” she said. “What a surprise. Have you been lurking in my front bushes for long?”
He glared daggers at her. “Theresa, you and I are gonna have a talk about uppity bitches that don’t know their place.”
Chapter Ten
As Zach entered the lobby of his hotel, a disturbing foreboding overcame him. His wolf rushed to the fore, roiling with aggression, and the instinctive desire to transform seized him. Regardless of the fact that there were dozens of humans nearby, he wanted nothing more than to shed his clothing and slide into his canine form.
Fear and panic plagued him, provoking his most primal instincts. The emotions were not his own, and it took him almost a minute to identify the external source. As he stepped into the elevator, he put his finger on it—Theresa. Her distress reached him across the miles, calling to him to protect her, an impossible feat given the distance separating them. However, his aggression had no outlet.
Somehow, she had reached out to draw energy from him. A lot. Enough to fuel a transformation or a fight—or maybe both. Since they did not share a mate bond, it was a remarkable feat. He had the ability to cut her off any time he wanted, but such a thing was unthinkable. He remained open and allowed her to borrow from his power.
The elevator doors slid open and it was, thankfully, empty. He could not have entered a small room full of humans without someone noticing the glow of his eyes or the elongation of his canines. Of course, the power draw was the primary reason for his slippery control. The energy ripped through his body, traveling across the surface of his skin, arousing his wolf. Entering the empty elevator, Zach punched the button for his floor and pulled out his cell phone. He called Theresa’s home number and listened while it rang and then went to the answering machine.
“You’ve reached Theresa and Isabel. Please leave a message.”
Beep.
“Theresa, it’s Zach. I know something’s wrong. Call me when you get this.” He hit disconnect and stared at his phone in frustration.
He checked the time and saw that it was just after midnight in Nevada. Theresa should either still be at work or on her way home. Isabel would be spending the night with her grandmother, who would take her to school in the morning.
After a moment’s consideration, he used his Internet browser to locate the phone number to Hilary’s Diner. An abrupt-sounding man answered the phone. “Yeah?”
Zach wasted no time with niceties. “Is Theresa there? Theresa Sanchez?”
A weighted silenced ensued. Then the man said, “She’s not available right now.”
Click.
“Bloody hell.” Swearing under his breath, Zach exited the elevator and made his way to his room. He curbed his desire to throw the phone at the wall. As soon as he got home, he intended to buy Theresa a cell phone and to make her promise to carry it. Her stubborn insistence about not accepting anything from him be damned.
Instead, he wracked his brain, trying to figure out what to do next. Thinking that Theresa’s mother might know what was going on, he performed a directory search for her phone number. However, it turned up no public listing.
It took a real effort not to rip the door to his hotel room off its hinges. He slid the electronic key into the reader and entered the impersonal space. In his current frame of mind, it felt more like an enclosure and he paced the length of the room with the pent up energy of a caged tiger, yearning for the physical expression of his aggression. A chance to kill. An enemy to destroy. Only, there was nothing. No physical foe, no ready answers.
There were a number of people he could call. The trick was narrowing it down to the one person who wouldn’t fail or betray him. Finally, Zach made a calculated decision, opened his phone again, and dialed his friend and rival. He sat there listening to the phone ring, thinking it was funny how a crisis showed a man who he really trusted.
<
br /> “Yeah?” Robert answered. A car engine purred in the background.
“It’s Zach. I need your help.”
Robert didn’t hesitate. “Sure, man, what’s up?”
“Theresa is in trouble, and I haven’t been able to get hold of her. I’m still in Chicago.”
Leather squeaked and the rev of the engine indicated a downshift. Robert’s voice retained the same calm precision that made him a deadly opponent in the courtroom. “What’s happening? Do you have any specifics?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I can tell that something’s wrong.” A growl of frustration rumbled in Zach’s throat and energy crawled across his skin. It required all of his discipline to maintain control. “I only know that she’s upset, and she’s drawing power from me.”
“I can feel something too, but I hadn’t realized Theresa was the source,” Robert said. “Do you know where she is?”
“She should be leaving work or on her way home.” Zach supplied the diner’s address and Theresa’s work schedule.
The roar of the engine intensified as the car accelerated. “I’m down the street from her house. I’ll check it out and call you back.” Then, after a pause, Robert asked, “Would Isabel be with her?”
The prospect of Isabel being in danger set Zach even further on edge and his knuckles whitened on the phone, threatening to crush the device. “No, she should be at her grandmother’s house.”
“Good.” Robert’s tone conveyed heartfelt relief.
“I’m heading to the airport.” Zach grabbed his bag and shoveled his belongings into the duffle.
“Hang in there, man. I’ll call you back as soon as I know what’s up.”
“Thanks, Robert.”
“Sure thing, no problem.” Robert hung up.
Zach shoved his phone into his pocket and crammed the last of his belongings into his bag. He yanked open the door to his hotel room and stormed out, but a sense of dread rode his shoulders. No matter how fast he moved, it wouldn’t be fast enough.
****
The Mating Game Page 14
